Memories of Us
by Bressa W
Summary: Have you ever wondered how Arwen felt when she first met Aragorn? A firstperson narrative of how she felt when she met him, when she told Elrond she was seeing him...and when he died. ONE SHOT, R&R!


Memories of Us

A Profound Memorial to Aragorn son of Arathorn

By

Bressa W.

**Disclaimer:** I do not own any of the characters in this story. I am merely an author making an attempt to do justice to J.R.R. Tolkien. Also, I am aware that Aragorn did not die in this fashion; he passed away at a time of his choosing and it was very peaceful. However, I found it more dramatic to put his mind in the clutches of Alzheimer's disease. I hope the readers can forgive me.

In the early morning, pale rays of sun caressed the panes of glass in the citadel. Birds could be heard in the garden and the heat of a bright summer sun already warmed the air.

The warm, happy mood of the outdoors never reached the inside of the citadel.

King Elessar, Aragorn, son of Arathorn, ruler of the house of Telcontar, King of Gondor, was dying. He lay on a bed of down feathers, the sheets rumpled from his incessant tossing and turning. He recognized no visitor, not even me, his own wife.

I called to him, asked if he remembered my name. He stared at me with glazed, unseeing eyes. I sobbed. I never had sobbed for him before, not when the long years of his life had finally caught up with him. The past five years had been terrible; he seldom recognized his son, Eldarion, or our daughters. There were times that he barely remembered who I was.

Yet I never cried until I saw him dying.

Eventually, the disease had crept down from his brain to his body and was taking control of him. He slept too little or too much. He cried or laughed loudly, never with any tears. He called for Gilraen, or for Elrond, or even sometimes for me, though when I came to him he never recognized me. Now, in his final hours, all I could do was hold his hand and tell him of our happiest memories.

"Do you remember, Aragorn," I said, "when we first met? Do you remember what you first said to me, what you first called to me through the trees in Rivendell? It was so long ago, even for me it feels like an age…"

_I was dancing through the trees, singing merrily in the high Elvish tongue, Quenya. I heard someone else singing. The voice, a man's, was beautiful, a strong tenor, singing of Luthien Tinuviel and Beren, an Elf and a Man who fell in love. They lived many happy years together, but when Beren died, Luthien spent the rest of her eternal life in misery, bound to her grief under the fading trees, living in despair and shadow, until she died of a broken heart. It is a beautiful story, and when sung in Quenya, it makes a very beautiful song. His song mesmerized me. I was frightened, deep down inside, that he would see me. Yet that same part of me wanted to be seen. Something about him was captivating._

_His song ended, and he did see me. He called to me, "Oh, Tinuviel! Oh, Elven maiden fair!" _

_I was shocked. I ran, and I could feel him chasing me. For a man, he was graceful, but I felt his footfalls nonetheless._

_He caught up with me eventually. I turned quickly and stared into the clearest and deepest eyes I have ever seen. I gasped, and he thought I was gasping with fright, and he backed away slightly and apologized. "I'm sorry for frightening you," he said softly._

_I shook my head. "I was not frightened, merely surprised."_

_He nodded, as though he understood what I was saying. "What is your name, fair maiden? Surely you must be a relative of the fair Luthien."_

"_My name, I cannot say. My heritage, it seems, is guessed already." I smiled weakly and he smiled in return. His eyes smiled with him. He had lovely eyes._

"_Yet you are a mystery, fair maiden. I cannot guess farther than who your earliest ancestor may be. Surely you have more to share." He smiled again, but this time it was more of a grin. I could not help myself. I grinned back._

"_In due time, you will know more than enough about me. For now, may I ask your name?" I was polite, and, I have been told, rather coy with him._

"_I go by Estel, yet this is not my name," he replied. It seemed to me he was trying to match me in mysterious behavior, and he was doing well._

"_It is your name and yet is not your name? My dear sir, you are confused. Surely you could tell me what your real name is?"_

"_And surely you could tell me yours?" He smiled again, and I smiled widely back. _

_I backed away slowly, promising that I would return._

"_When? I want to see you again!" he called after me as I retreated._

"_We will meet again." I ran and felt my heart beating faster than I've ever felt it before. This man would be my undoing. I knew it from the start. _

_The next time that I saw him was years later, 29 in Man's reckoning, and he had matured to his full manhood, being strong and sound of body and mind. I wandered under the mallorn trees of Caras Galadhon, unshod and nearly free of raiment but for a silver cloak wrapped over my shoulders and the crown of stars upon my brow. My grandmother, Galadriel, had clad him in the fashion of a high Elven king. He recognized me before I even noticed he was there_

"_Tinuviel!" he cried out to me, using the name of my ancestor, for he knew not my given name._

_I was startled, as before, but pleased to hear his voice. Upon hearing him speak, my own voice seemed harsh and grated against my nerves. I turned to him and smiled slightly. "I've missed you, Estel," I said softly. "You must have traveled far. Surely you've forgotten me in all of your newfound wisdom?" My voice dripped with a flirtatious sarcasm that he quickly caught on to. We engaged in playful banter for quite a while._

"_I do not recall the face of any other woman," he replied softly, his expressive eyes lit with a beautiful and uplifting shine, "since I have seen your face."_

"_You jest," I replied. "I am sure you could name many women whom you find far more beautiful than I."_

_He stole up to my side, though to this day I know not how he did so with such grace and speed. It seemed to me that he had barely moved before I was swept up into his strong arms. "There is naught more beautiful than the twilight," he replied._

_I laid my head against his chest and our heartbeats became one. In this moment, I was as sure as I had ever been in all my years that I would spend the rest of my days with this man. "I love you," I said, so softly that my voice was barely audible to me, yet somehow he heard it._

_He tilted my face up until our eyes met. So intense, so focused, was his gaze that I found myself entirely incapable of looking away. "And I you."_

"_Kiss me."_

_For what felt as an eternity, we stood upon the hills of the forests of Caras Galadhon, the sun lighting the golden leaves of the mallorn trees until the glow seemed not to be natural. It felt so right to be in his strong arms._

"…I loved you so much then, Aragorn," I told him, weeping silently. "I still love you just as strongly, and my feelings have only grown in the days since. We built a life together, a life I am loath to tear down now, after enduring so many trials and overcoming them to so many triumphs. Don't you remember me at all?"

Aragorn looked straight at me, our eyes were locked, but the light and the magic and the life were gone from the eyes I had spent so many years drowning in every time I looked into them. The most expressive eyes I have ever seen now lay lifeless. He moved his lips wordlessly, and then muttered, "Love you, Arwen."

I saw, for the first time in five years, the present and the future emblazoned in his eyes. I saw him laughing with Eldarion as he raised him high over his head as a child, I saw him promising to love me forever at our marriage ceremony, I saw him firmly but lovingly disciplining our daughters on the proper behaviors of young ladies. I saw that he loved me, and that he did remember loving me and loving the life we shared, and that no matter how ill he was, he could always remember how much he loved me.

"Arwen…" he said weakly, "do not forget. Do not forget the past." He stared at the ceiling, as though he was trying to see to the stars. I was reminded of a saying he had written to describe me,

_In the twilight_

_Lies the path to the stars_

This was somewhat of a private joke between us. Every time one of us was to leave the other for any amount of time, they would quote the first line of the verse and the person to stay behind would quote the second line. We had never shared the verse with anyone, deciding without speaking that it was not for anyone else to hear or to use. It was ours alone.

Aragorn looked away from the ceiling and into my eyes again. His eyes were misty as he said, "In the twilight…"

"…Lies the path to the stars," I responded, crying softly. He reached out a feeble hand to take mine.

"Tell me a story, Arwen," he said. It seemed, weak as he was, that he was in the throes of death and was granted, by the grace of the Valar, the gift of his mind until the time came that he would pass beyond.

I thought for a moment before the perfect story came to me. "Aragorn, do you remember the day I told Ada about us? Do you remember how he reacted? He was so angry with me…"

_Elrond was deeply saddened by his daughter's choice. How could a man she'd known for only a few fleeting hours be the one for her to love? Didn't she understand that being with him would cost her the immortality she'd had as a birth rite? He sighed. _

_"Daughter," Ada said gently, "you must not love this man. He will not live as you live. He is a mortal, and he will make you choose. You can stay here until the appropriate time, then cross over to the West with me, or you can stay here and die with your beloved, which will only cause you grief and pain until the grief becomes unbearable and you pass away forever from all the known realms. He will cause you to choose, perhaps not by choice, but he will, between your love for him…and your love for me."_

_I wept to hear the truth told so bluntly and so bitterly. "Ada…" I began, but he placed a finger to my lips to silence me._

_"You do not have to choose now. But the time will come when you must. And are you ready to choose between your two greatest loves? Would you cause me to forever embitter myself against this man, whom I have raised as my own son? For if I go, then my grief will go with me, and I foresee that if this is the path you choose, you shan't see me again after you take the name of his house."_

_"Do you hate him, Ada?" I asked, nearly inaudibly. He sat down beside me and wrapped an arm over my shoulder._

_"No. I love this man as though he were my own kindred," he said soothingly. "But if you choose him and mortality over me, I'm afraid I won't ever forgive him. He is not worthy of your beauty and your grace."_

_I shook my head. "No, Ada. It is I that is not worthy of him."_

_Ada sighed and turned away from me. I could feel his unhappiness seething from the pores of his psyche, and the strength of it assaulted my mind. I wondered, for the first time, if, by giving Aragorn my heart, I had made the wrong decision. "I love him, Ada," I said gently, "and I love you. But neither of you will be the decider of my fate. My love is mine to give, and my fate is mine to decide. I will not tell either of you of my decision until after it has been made." I hugged my father and turned his face so that I could see into his clearly depressed eyes. "You mustn't be concerned," I said sternly yet softly. "I have the gift of foresight, as you do. I know the consequences if I choose either path."_

_"But Arwen…" Ada began. _

_I did not give him a chance to finish his thought. "There is no way to avoid him, Ada. If I take the path you offer to me, I will be forever haunted by memories of him. They will be bittersweet, for, though they may be the best memories I shall ever have, they will be never more than that. If I choose the path of mortality, I will watch him die and will grieve until the grief takes me far from the known realms in Middle-earth. I cannot avoid the pain."_

_"The pain will be so much less if you pass to the West," Ada said soothingly and evenly, as though trying to convince me without having to argue with me._

_"Will it?" I asked, looking out over the railing of limestone to the beauty of the valley below. "Will I be happy if I am forever enslaved by the sweet memories of our time together? Nay, I see good and evil in both paths, and you cannot convince me that one is better than the other. I must decide for myself."_

_Ada nodded and a tear slid silently down his cheek. He rarely showed emotion, however, and the tear wasn't followed by another. "I understand, Daughter. I will not try to influence you any longer." And, after kissing me on the cheek, he rose from the couch he'd been sitting on and left my chambers._

_After he left, I sank into the seat he'd been sitting in, still warm from the heat of his body. "What am I to do?" I said to myself, trying to sort out my thoughts verbally. "To whom do my loyalties lie?" I knew they answer to the question; my loyalties belonged to my father, but my heart belonged to Aragorn._

"...I spent so much time attempting to decide the right way to go," I told Aragorn, who was listening with rapt attention to my story. "I meditated for weeks on the right way to go, bending my thought this way and that to see which would lead to the most happiness and would be the most fulfilling. I chose to be with you, and I see now that I chose the right choice."

Aragorn nodded slowly, as though entranced by my words. "I have never regretted loving you," he said in a feeble and small voice. Where was the rich and strong voice that had guided me through my darkest hours? Where was the man that had been my shelter and my throughout all of our relationship? It felt to me that, though his body and soul be still on earth, that I had already lost my beloved. I wept for the loss of his love. "I still love you," he said, smiling with his beautiful sea-grey eyes at me. "I have always, will always, love you." And then, he was gone.

_My grief is yet unrelieved. There will never be another who loved me as he does. Yes, I say he does love me. I know this with all of my heart and soul, which I gave to my beloved long ago. Wither we wander, we are together. Our hearts are entwined and our souls are one. I am nothing, incomplete now. I am grieving, ever grieving, and I will never be excused from this pain. Eldarion is strong. He rules Gondor wisely and justly, as did his father. Our daughters are married to noble men who treat them with respect and cherish them. I would not have it any other way._

_I am destined to die, as did my ancestor, Luthien Tinuviel, so long ago. I will die under the fading trees. I am bound to this world through my grief, and my grief will one day claim what is left of my soul, the pieces that he did not take with him. I can only count the days, the hours, and the minutes, until I see my beloved again. I know that I will. I have seen his eyes smiling at me through the stars, and_

In the twilight

Lies the path to the stars

Author's note: Did you cry? I cried when I was writing it! Then again, I am a sap. I'm sorry it wasn't longer, but I couldn't stand to have Aragorn suffer too much.


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